> "Nowadays people have an implicit understanding that the net is vast and infinite, it's beyond the ability of one man to fully catch up, and you're just tuning into a slice of the data stream".
This is beautifully written, and condense enough to explain to anyone why we're burnt out with consumption.
Your full comment is spot on, and like you, I don’t have a perfect solution. Digests are a good idea, but there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human. I think the real challenge is to create a digest that gives you a personal, meaningful view while still leaving the door open to a wider context. But if you lean too far into broadening it, you risk losing that sense of ownership and relevance. It’s a tough balance.
Thank you,
> there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human
This is spot on, and why I become more of a free software radical every year. Even though these UX experiments roll around in my head, I doubt you can make any algorithm that is "unbiased" and perfect for all people.
Ergo the only real solution is to let a thousand algorithms bloom, and give people the ability to select the ones they want; this is getting back to the idea of the software being a "user agent" that fetches content for you and does what you want it to do, as opposed to being an advertiser's agent. Maybe there's some alternate reality out there where everything was AGPL'ed from the get-go and Facebook et al got forked a thousand times and had to compete with forks that were more user friendly. Or barring that maybe the problem gets solved in 100 years with a dozen Mastodon forks blooming, I don't know, but I'm sure if you could choose your algorithm, it would look nothing like the Instagram app in particular does today, which is my personal choice for the most mind-destroying software I find myself sometimes using
Or maybe if the government succeeds in breaking the monopolies that rule over both social media and the online advertising industry...?